


SUNFLOWERS IN AUTUMN

by gensuis



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, College AU, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan - Freeform, Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, but there will be porn!, hint of coffee shop au really, more tags to be added as things become applicable, the Dorothea/Byleth is a side ship they're lesbian/bi wingmen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2019-09-06
Packaged: 2020-09-19 14:17:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20318506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gensuis/pseuds/gensuis
Summary: Dimitri Blaiddyd is a rising freshman at Garreg Mach University. His dorm roommate happens to be the extremely attractive Claude von Riegan. Dimitri must learn to balance campus life and his new crush on the man he lives with while also figuring out how to ask Claude out... before someone else does.The boy, who’d seemed to sprout from nowhere as if he’d been planted directly in the room, was beautiful, and half-naked, and gleaming with sweat, and hairy in places that made Dimitri warm under the collar of his fresh-pressed dress shirt.One box fell. From there it was only inevitable that the others did, too, because Dimitri Blaiddyd’s college life, it seemed, was destined to be an embarrassing nightmare from the very start. In a matter of seconds, both Dimitri and his new roommate were on their knees, collecting the boxes and their upended contents. Dimitri didn’t think he’d apologized so much or so frantically in his lifetime. He felt so confoundingly stupid, in that moment. So wholly stupid that he could very well have just made a dunce hat and walked about campus like that for the rest of his days.The stupidest he’d felt in a long, long while.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to keep / my mind at bay,  
Sunflower still grows at night.  
\-- "Sunflower", Rex Orange County

Byleth Eisner could make even a lollipop look threatening.

The way she wielded it, it felt more like a sword pointed in his direction than a sugary confectionary, and when framed with the way that she knitted her dark eyebrows together, Dimitri felt very much as though he were about to be vaporized directly out of existence, like a character in a video game. A flick of Byleth’s wrist and then, in a brief second, he’d just be a smatter of dust on the floor.

Here came the Game Over screen just now. He could practically see it, a pixelated slide from the corner of his eye.

But it was only Dorothea, always such a saint, striding over to place a latte beside the teaching assistant’s closed laptop. She plucked that instrument of war from Byleth’s grasp and stuck it into her own mouth, and licked at it thoughtfully for a few seconds.

“She is right, you know. About not even saying a word to him before running off like that. If you’re going to live with him for a whole year, or more, you’ll need to get used to him.” Dorothea feigned a dreamy look off into distance, and Dimitri sank deeper into the hard café chair. “_Lean,_ and swarthy, and –”

“And like one of those two-penny romance novel covers,” Byleth finished. “The ones with the muscular men on the front.”

The heat seemed to fall over Dimitri like a funeral pall. He figured this was how he was going to go. Not by Byleth’s lollipop but as a victim of a mortification so intense that it disintegrated him from the inside – out. There were worse ways to go, maybe, but if there were, Dimitri couldn’t see them at that moment.

“Do you want to switch dorms?” Byleth leveled Dimitri with a stare that cut so deep he was sure his guts were going to spill out onto the floor. Dorothea pulled out a chair to sit, too, apprising him eagerly.

“I’m sure I’ve made a terrible impression,” Dimitri said. “Running off like that, he no doubt thinks I hate him – “

Dorothea fluffed out the length of her hair, lollipop handle stuck out of the side of her mouth. “Or he thinks you’re weird.”

“You didn’t answer the question.” Was Byleth’s answer.

Dimitri raked a hand through his hair. He would have stopped traffic if they’d thrown him into the street. “I don’t want to change dorms, no. And I’m not – I’m not weird! Am I?”

Byleth took a sip from her coffee cup. “No, just utterly stunted, socially.” To which Dorothea tried to hide her smile with the back of her hand, masquerading it as politely as she could as a gentle cough. Byleth’s eyes flicked to her, softening as they did, lips tugging at the corners.

“Start at the beginning,” Byleth coaxed, setting her mug back down against the table with a clack. “We’ll try to help you. Promise.”

***

Garreg Mach was one of those universities that some people would have sacrificed their whole family to get into. Dimitri had visited before, in that teenage ritual of racing about campuses all across the country, but he still felt a measure of awe in him to even pace down the halls of his dorm. The college was small enough, and _selective_ enough, that it called for only a single co-ed dormitory, with each floor long enough to house its chosen students.

Dimitri’s dorm was on the third floor, or the Blue Floor. The walls were a sharp navy color, with wood flooring, and white painted doors that had sleek silver numbers nailed to the front. His head craned over the mountain of moving boxes in his arms to read them. 723… 724… 725…

His dorm was 726, and it looked as though the door had already been propped open to the hallway. A stream of low music spilled out of it. He looked at the adjacent door. That one said 727. This had to be his room, which meant that his roommate arrived before he did. That wasn’t so terrible. Dimitri had already been willing to acquiesce to the desires of his roommate when it came to who had what side, as a measure of goodwill.

He lingered outside in the hall for a moment, worried that it might be rude to walk in without announcing himself, when a girl with vibrantly pink hair stepped backwards out of the room.

Her fingernails were painted black and sharpened like a set of daggers, and her voice had the tendency to lilt girlishly when she spoke. “Well, good_bye_ Claude. _Don’t_ forget we have English together, _alright?_ I’d really hate it if my _bestie_ couldn’t be bothered to show up.” She waved each and every one of those nails into the dorm.

She whirled on one heel, handbag swinging at her side like an axeblade. She’d turned on the only other thing in the hall: Dimitri himself, and when her eyes fell over him it seemed to happen all at once, in one smooth motion from head and down. “_Aw_, I’ve got a feeling you’re Claude’s _roomie._”

Dimitri blinked at her.

“Room… seven twenty-six, right?” Her eyelashes were heavy, and fluttered a lot when she spoke.

“Oh, um. Yes,” He hefted the boxes in his arms a bit. “If you don’t mind,”

“That’s a _lot_ of boxes,” She said. “Don’t you want help?”

Dimitri got the feeling that she wasn’t exactly offering. But he said, “No, thank you,” all the same, and received a petulant little smile in response.

The pink-haired girl shrugged. “Well, _whatever. _You’re almost there, anyway! I’m Hilda Goneril, I’d shake your hand, _but,_” Those lengthy eyelashes batted at him again. “It _looks_ like you’ve got your hands full!”

And with that, she went, heels clicking against the wood floor when she passed. Hilda’s perfume lingered behind her like a candy-scented cloud. _Claude,_ she’d said. It felt strange to know his roommate’s name without even having seen him. Dimitri felt he had a small picture of what his roommate must have been like, to have such a girl as a friend.

The encounter left Dimitri feeling a bit more emboldened. He took a deep breath, steadied the boxes in his arms some more, and walked right into the dorm room with his shoulders straight. It was only a few steps in, but each one felt like a strange, infinitesimal eternity.

“Hey! I figured you’d be around soon – “

But Dimitri didn’t hear the rest of that sentence. He was busy trying to keep the boxes in his arms from tumbling to the ground, as they’d suddenly become too heavy and too precarious. It wasn’t that he was feeling freshly clumsy. But the boy, who’d seemed to sprout from nowhere as if he’d been planted directly in the room, was beautiful, and _half-naked, _and gleaming with sweat, and hairy in places that made Dimitri warm under the collar of his fresh-pressed dress shirt.

One box fell. From there it was only inevitable that the others did, too, because Dimitri Blaiddyd’s college life, it seemed, was destined to be an embarrassing nightmare from the very start. In a matter of seconds, both Dimitri and his new roommate were on their knees, collecting the boxes and their upended contents. Dimitri didn’t think he’d apologized so much or so frantically in his lifetime. He felt so confoundingly stupid, in that moment. So wholly stupid that he could very well have just made a _dunce_ hat and walked about campus like that for the rest of his days.

The stupidest he’d felt in a long, _long_ while.

“You don’t have to say sorry,” Claude had a voice that was honey-sweet, but not like the girl in the hall, who canted her words. His was low and he elongated his vowels like they didn’t fit right in his mouth sometimes, but there wasn’t a trace of an accent anywhere. He handed Dimitri a textbook. Dimitri took it, sweat pooling in the center of his palms. “Didn’t do it on purpose, right? Sure my good looks just shocked you to the core.”

Dimitri would have given anything for a drink of water. “No, it’s just – the boxes were heavy, and…”

***

“ – So you lied to him?” Interrupted Byleth, looking sharply up from the horizon of her latte mug. Dorothea was still licking at her lollipop, self-satisfied in the fact that not a single customer had come into the café while Dimitri regaled them with tales of his idiocy. “I know those boxes weren’t heavy for you, Dimitri.”

“What was I supposed to say? Excuse me, I wasn’t expecting you to have your chest out in our room, and you were so beautiful that it made me drop everything in my arms?”

Dorothea whipped the lollipop on him now. “That’s exactly what you should have said. It might have even worked, too.”

Dimitri felt a lot like he was in one of those procedural detective shows. The blazingly ugly fluorescent lighting in the room fell starkly down on him like a naked, gleaming lightbulb. His cheeks burned.

Byleth leaned forward in her chair. “Keep going,” She was a woman who leaned so heavily towards apathy that her tone, at times, was as deadened as a tree’s lost limb. But here, she felt nearly comforting. Dimitri tucked a breath back into himself.

“We’re listening.” Dorothea finished for her, smiling.

***

“And I truly didn’t mean to, I’m sorry,” Dimitri said, piling the textbook back into one of his boxes. It would have been nice to be one of those animals that played dead whenever it saw a car coming head-on. But Claude only laughed a bit more, and Dimitri kept trying not to look at him, seeing him only out of the whites of his eyes, like he were an abstract work of art.

They’d put most of Dimitri’s belongings back into the boxes now, and were rising from the floor together. He was taller than Claude, but not by much.

“What’d I say about apologizing? I shouldn’t have just come out of nowhere.” He stuck his thumb back behind him to where a bright yellow mini fridge buzzed industriously. “I was putting my _housewarming_ gift from my friend in the fridge.”

Dimitri felt like his tongue had gone and glued itself to the roof of his mouth.

Claude extended a hand. “I’m Claude von Riegan.”

This, at least, seemed a lot easier with so few boxes in his hands. Dimitri wiped his sweaty palms out on his pants before taking the hand. They shook. Claude had a strong grip, and it tightened for only a moment before he released him.

“Dimitri,” His tongue unsealed itself. “Dimitri Blaiddyd.”

Claude let out a low whistle. “That’s a mouthful.”

“It’s Welsh,” He felt pompous underneath Claude’s easy smile, but his mouth kept going. “It means wolf lord.”

“That so?” Claude’s arms crossed over his chest. “I’d ask if you’re going into linguistics, but from the look of your textbooks, I already know that isn’t the right answer.”

It would have been wonderful, if the floor would just choose in that moment to open up a void and swallow him whole. But it would have been equally nice if the breathtakingly handsome man in the room would just put a shirt on. “No. Criminal Justice, I’m afraid.”

“Afraid?” Maybe if he begged over and over in his head, it would happen. “What, don’t like Criminal Justice?”

“No,” Dimitri said it so hurriedly that Claude’s eyebrows rose. “No, I have – I’ve a lot of passion for it, actually. I just meant, that I was afraid you’re wrong.”

“Oh,” Claude replied, in that voice that Dimitri was growing to realize, terribly, that he was keen on hearing more of.

“What are you majoring in?” The floor still refused to take him.

“Political Science,” Said Claude, with such sure confidence that it made Dimitri’s head spin. How could he handle this stilted, cookie-cutter conversation? He seemed to make it look so simple “I’ve got an overly idealistic desire to make the world a better place. One crooked politician at a time.”

He smiled more, like it’d been a joke that only he knew the punchline of. All Dimitri could offer was a bareboned laugh, entirely stripped of humor. A silence grew between them that Dimitri grew increasingly aware of. Seconds ticked by. He wasn’t sure what else to say, and it looked a lot as though Claude were waiting for him _to_ say something, and the harder Dimitri attempted to summon up the words for small-talk, the more his thoughts slipped through the cracks of his mind like a sieve, disappearing nowhere.

“I hope you don’t mind,” The start of Claude’s sentence dragged Dimitri’s eyes up from the floor. “But I took the right side.”

Dimitri was grateful for the chance to look around their dorm room. It wasn’t the smallest room he’d ever been in, but it was compact, square, and seemed split fairly down the middle. A stripped window let in beams of sunlight from outside, and the walls were eggshell white, plain with the exception of a few posters on Claude’s side that he looked to have been in the middle of pinning up. It was mostly band posters, of musicians Dimitri hadn’t heard of. Half-hidden in the corner of one of them was a yellowing newspaper clipping of a dark-haired woman with a gold medal around her neck, raising a bow to an explosion of camera flash.

Claude looked to have a lot of knick-knacks that didn’t seem to go together. A hideously vomit-green crocheted blanket sat in a crumpled pile at the foot of his bed. The source of the music that’d been playing into the hall was an electric vinyl player that spun a glossy black record. His textbooks looked as though they’d been dumped wherever Claude could find space for them, and a few rather thick volumes sat already opened on his cedar desk, with small braided ribbons bookmarked into them.

“It’s alright,” Dimitri moved his boxes over to his side. “You were here first,”

“You’re agreeable,” Claude nodded approvingly, falling onto the bed with a loud creak of the bedsprings. “I expected more resistance.”

“Did you want resistance?”

“Not exactly,” He scratched at the front of his chest, above a long line of hair that crept somewhere that Dimitri’s eyes tried desperately not to follow. “But that housewarming gift I mentioned earlier? I was going to use it as a bribe if you were _less_ than agreeable. Not that that was Hilda’s purpose in giving it, but… you use what you have to get what you want, right?”

Dimitri wasn’t so sure what to think of that. He tried to conjure up an image of himself, only more stubborn, and unwilling to compromise over something so insignificant as a side of the room to sleep on. Would he have been willing to give up a year of choice for whatever was inside of Claude’s mini-fridge?

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Dimitri said. “I don’t sleep very easily as it is.”

“An insomniac! Unfortunately, I can’t relate. I like to get in both my forty winks _and_ my afternoon nap. Some people accuse me of being downright slovenly, and in some cases, they might just be right.”

Dimitri slotted his textbooks, neatly, into the shelf above his desk. He didn’t say a single word for a moment, glad for the reason to have his back to his new roommate. Claude, evidently, was the type to dislike silence, because after a few more seconds of it he whistled a tune to fill it.

“Since we’re talking about sleeping, or lack thereof…” It seemed Claude had finally come to what he wanted to talk about the most. “Care to lay down ground rules? Since we’re going to be living together for a little while, it’d just be right.”

Dimitri, who knew precisely what Claude meant, but whose mouth had hijacked its motor function and seemed to only keep going, asked, dumbly, “Ground rules?”

“You know,” Claude said. “What’s a no – no for you, your boundaries.” He paused. Dimitri was sure that that set of jade eyes was drilling holes into the back of his skull. “Guessing you’re kind of a neat freak? I’m a bit on the messy side, so, I hope that’s not going to be an issue.”

“As long as you keep it contained to your side, I’ll be fine.”

“Can do, boss.”

“I don’t have any ground rules myself, I don’t think.”

“Yeah?” There was a tilt to Claude’s tone that made Dimitri’s back straighten, like he’d been lashed to a pole. He slid the very last book into the end of the shelf and turned now, fully turned. Claude looked as though he’d been waiting for that, perched forward on the edge of his own bed, forearms settled on the knees and one corner of his mouth upturning. There was a trickiness to him that made Dimitri’s stomach twist. “So – you won’t mind if I sleep naked, huh?”

A fog rolled in through Dimitri’s mind. He could not tell if it was a joke, or a genuine question, or something else entirely – Claude’s intentions slanted off on him, falling nowhere and everywhere all at once. His lips pursed tightly. Thoughts climbed higher and higher in his head, before plummeting down, piledriving into his anxieties and exhuming new ones from the earth.

“Excuse me,” Dimitri said.

On the bed, Claude’s eyes only widened. Then suddenly he was getting farther away, and then so was the dorm, and then Dimitri’s feet had taken him away in a panic, far away from his new dormitory, and away from his new roommate, and away from the way the bottom of his stomach had tightened in response to Claude at all.

***

“And then I came here.” Dimitri’s voice was thick with shame. He did not look either Byleth or Dorothea in the eye, afraid of what he might see there if he dared: whether it be disgust or indignation or, worst of all, mockery for his ineptness. So the three of them fell into a hush, crowded together at that circular table as though a curtain had fallen upon them, signaling the end of a tragedy of operaic proportions. Dimitri wanted one of them to speak.

Even he hadn’t been sure what came over him; in situations such as this, it was normal for him to seek out Dedue first, rather than them both, but he hadn’t even been sure that Dedue had necessarily moved into his dorm room, or was even on campus yet at all.

Byleth and Dorothea both were a staple of the campus as it was, long into their time at the university and always found together, a set that could not be separated. Byleth typed away at the café while Dorothea worked, and both looked morose when the other wasn’t there, eyes distant and elsewhere, fixed on a spot where something else should have been.

He knew they’d be there on moving day, not yet ready to give up a summer of being together and holding onto it as long as they could.

Dorothea began to laugh. It was a laugh that wasn’t mocking, not truly, but it still made the tips of his ears tinge scarlet.

“You ran?” She asked, head tilted down. “Dimitri, he flirted with you.”

  
Dimitri’s own head jerked up. “No, he didn’t, I’m sure that’s not what that is,”

“I’m sure it is,” Dorothea said. He was reminded of a cat that’d swatted a bird out of the sky. “We both love you to _death,_ Didi, but… you’re dense.”

“You are.” Byleth confirmed.

“I am _not,_” He insisted. “It wasn’t a flirt, it was just – it’s not like it’s a terrible thing, sleeping naked, especially when it’s so hot, but –“

“But you think he’s gorgeous, don’t you?” Said Dorothea, as though she’d reached into his mind and tugged the thought out for herself.

Dimitri swallowed his tongue, and hoped his stomach acids would eat away at it, so he wouldn’t have to speak of this again, to anyone. He managed a nod.

“That’s not a bad thing, thinking someone’s beautiful,” Dorothea continued.

“I’ll be living with him, in the same dorm, and I don’t – I would hate to pressure him.”

“It isn’t pressuring to flirt. Unless you don’t want to take no for an answer.” She eyed him. Carefully. “And you would take no for an answer, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course,” He said it with a confidence he did not even realize he had. “Of course I would.”

Byleth, who had been quiet all this time, seemed to come to life again. “So you’ll go back to your dorm. And we,” She looked at Dorothea, as though for confirmation, and Dorothea seemed to give it. “We’ll help you get him.”

Horror skittered up his throat, coming out in a rushed explosion of a sentence, “No, no you don’t have to –”

But Dorothea stopped him. A pair of finely manicured hands came to him, taking his into her own. When she spoke, it was with a newfound determination that she’d scrounged from nowhere, and a blaze in her eyes. “Oh, no. We’re going to. Because _you, _Didi…”

Her thumbs rubbed the back of his palms. “You’re going to need _all_ the help you can get.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please consider following me @ gensuis on Twitter, leaving a kudos or a comment! I'm doing my best to update this story on a weekly basis, with certain lulls here and there, and I'd love to hear feedback on it!


	2. Chapter 2

Dorothea’s first order for him – and it was an order, given to him furtively over that small table as though they’d entered a war council – was to apologize to Claude. She’d taken it upon herself to declare ( enthusiastically ) that she and Byleth ( less enthusiastically ) were to be his wingmen, with the sole purpose of pairing him off with Claude. Her reward for her services? Only his undying love and adulation… and the promise to not miss a single one of her opera performances through the year, and so forth, past graduation and into perpetuity.

Protests lodged themselves in his throat, but he didn’t have a choice in it. Not when it made Dorothea’s face flush with excitement like that.

“It all starts with an apology,” Her voice had the strength and command of a general who’d read a thousand books on strategy in her lifetime. “You don’t even have to be honest with him, if you don’t want. Just say you had to use the bathroom. Or that you’d forgotten something, and you needed to go back for it.”

That was a fine enough pair of excuses. But it was, as it turned out for Dimitri, remarkably easy to avoid speaking with his new roommate.

Claude had the ability to disappear through the night and reappear only as dawn-light specter: a sleeping form huddled beneath that horrible blanket, snoring softly, as though he had not even left at all.

The night he came back, chest buoyed with recited apologies, Claude was nowhere to be found. His things remained on his side, and Dimitri’s – untouched – were on his. The room was left dark, like he hadn’t even the intention to come back soon.

A guilty relief spread throughout Dimitri’s body, but the worry that he’d offended Claude sunk into him instead.

He thought to wait for Claude to come back. Surely he’d just stepped out. Maybe to see the pink-haired girl again? He tiptoed around Claude’s piles of books, went back to setting up his own room for the better part of an hour, and looked over at the clock only a _few_ times. Or a few hundred.

Dimitri wondered, glancing over at Claude’s unmade bed, if the other man had sat there waiting for him for a while. He hoped he hadn’t. That idea seemed worse than anything else before it had; he hated to put anyone out for no reason, especially those he did not even know.

Claude never came back that night, at least not until long after Dimitri had fallen asleep.

***

Dimitri saw him in two places, and two places only: the three-hour philosophy class they shared, and in the morning, when he still slept and Dimitri rose for his morning runs. Besides that, it was as though Claude hardly existed on campus. His friend, Hilda, seemed to have turned to smoke, too. Even late into the night, when Dimitri curled up at his desk to fuss over his homework and to dissect the syllabi, Claude would not come back. Given how little sleep Dimitri was prone to getting, _that_ seemed the most bizarre of it all, but Claude always managed to find his way back to the dorm before sunrise, and before Dimitri collapsed bone-tired into the bed.

Their philosophy class was taught by Professor Hanneman, a stern-faced man who brooked no nonsense and whose devotion to the study of philosophers was indisputable. His voice was not tolerable in the early mornings; it was not that he droned on, as was typical of some terrible professors, and he was far from incompetent, but his class was not a fair one for those who hated mornings, and he knew it, pausing here and there to survey a yawning, head-cradling crowd with pursed lips.

Claude was in that majority.

That made him different from Dimitri in one rather crucial way. Dimitri could be awake all hours of the day, regardless of how little or how much sleep he’d gotten the night before, though it usually leaned towards the former. He sat straight-spined and alert at the front of his classes, the crisp top-buttoned portrait of a model student, straight off the front of a billboard advertisement.

The first Tuesday of class, Dimitri had set his notebooks and textbooks down and settled in. It was when he’d dug around in his bag for his pencil case that his roommate arrived – a mere two minutes before the start of class. The last Dimitri had seen of him was earlier that morning, as he came back from the bathroom, bunched into the corner of the bed with the blankets tugged up. Only the disheveled mess of his hair stuck out.

Now, he looked utterly different. If Dimitri were the picture of perfection, then Claude was reminiscent more of the reality of college student life – jeans, a half-zipped hoodie, one notebook and a single loose pen that he scrounged from the bottom of his bag.

Claude didn’t seem to have noticed him at all.

The other man took a safe, surreptitious seat on the other side of the room. Near the front of the class but not quite in the center, and let out a long, uncovered yawn, mouth wide as a cat’s.

Dorothea would have scolded him.

But Dimitri wasn’t sure what to say, or how to say it. The time and space between their first encounter in the dorm had been too long to say sorry now. Not that it mattered, as no matter how hard Dimitri tried to catch Claude’s eye, he didn’t look back at all.

Professor Hanneman arrived, signaling the end of that infinitesimal two minutes, and class began. When it did, Dimitri found his attention divided. Unlike most, morning classes did not make him feel as though a large man were holding his head forcibly underwater for hours. He was attentive, and polite, and inquiring.

There was one year where his grades had not been good in his life. And that had happened after _It_. Dimitri wasn’t about to go back to that disappointing year again. He’d vowed, even, that it wouldn’t happen. After a year spent in an on and off relationship with his school, he’d thrown himself back into it with the fervor of a madman. There was nothing which could come between him, or his education – and that culminated in his acceptance at this university. He had no plans to throw that away; not even, particularly, for the attentions of a boy.

Try as he might, however – and he did try, eyes blurring out on the open-close motion of Hanneman’s mouth – his gaze kept sliding over to that seat across the room from him. Claude watched Hanneman too, with more success than his dorm roommate. He rested his chin on the meat of his palm, and Dimitri drank in the sight of him. Claude looked like he’d slid into a new man when he was awake, and that Dimitri could make the comparison between now and then at all arrowed shame into him. But it was hard _not_ to notice, given their first encounter, where he’d felt he had seen _too much_ of him.

In sleep, every part of Claude’s face flattened benignly, a deeper stress having been bled from him. Here, though, his whole body looked like it was putting on a performance. It was the way an actor moved when they knew they were being watched and had to be ready for a camera from anywhere, in any direction, at all angles. It seemed to say: _I know other people are looking at me, so I’m making myself worth looking at._

The beginnings of a carefully trimmed beard bloomed on the edges of his jawline, and he had a long, hard neck. The crag of an Adam’s apple jutted out. Dimitri’s eyes caught on it, and a thought crept in, intrusively. _What would it be like, kissing that? _

That neck moved in one swift motion, too late for Dimitri to pretend he’d been looking past into space. A pair of green eyes locked with his own, paralyzing him in his chair. He knew that by now he should have looked away, that this could only do more harm to his roommate’s impression of him, but he sat there, heat pooling into his stomach, skin prickling underneath his clothes.

If Claude recognized him, it didn’t show in his eyes; he was looking the way Dimitri should have looked – through, rather than into, and then it was over again. Claude’s eyes fell back onto Hanneman, and Dimitri’s lungs remembered they needed to breathe again.

He stared at his hands. This notebook, this textbook, this pencil case – these were the only things he’d look at from then on, for the rest of the class period. That was the resolve he made, over and over: a litany that kept his eyes from wandering.

The rest of the class period crawled by. Claude, despite the half-hearted want in Dimitri’s heart, did not look at him again.

***

This was the routine that he’d had every morning since he was fourteen years old: wake up at five in the morning, brush his teeth, yank back the length of his hair, and hit the pavement outside running. Dimitri’s legs would take him wherever he wished to go. At home, that had been anywhere at all, so long as the distance was reasonable enough for him to make it back in time for a brisk, boiling shower.

At the university, Dimitri’s runs encompassed the circumference of the campus, but not much more than that. By the end of the week, even he was growing exhausted of seeing the same landmarks sunrise after sunrise. He’d even counted the amount of lampposts that sprung along the campus pathways on his run. Seventy-four, in total.

He wasn’t always the only one awake at this time. Students milled about, regretting their morning classes or evening activities, and others biked or were on their own jogs. Not Claude, he noticed; not Hilda, either.

The café was typically open around the time he began his run back. Dimitri paused in there to see Dorothea, who was usually slouched over the counter. The bridge of their friendship was never there, in her usual spot. Byleth had never been an early riser. Dorothea tugged herself from the countertop and rubbed the sleepiness from her eyes with one hand, while the other brewed up his coffee. Extra milk, extra sugar.

That Saturday morning, Dimitri had gotten up for his routine as he did every morning. He’d picked up a new habit in his time at university. When he had stirred himself half-asleep from his bed, his eyes would search for Claude’s. Curious, as he always was, to see if the other man had found his way back to the dorm. But this particular morning, that bed had been vacated. The sheets and blankets wound themselves into inorganic shapes, like they’d swallowed their occupant but never spat him out.

Worry wormed into the apple of Dimitri’s heart. With no idea as to where Claude had been spending his extracurriculars, though, there was nothing for him to do. They’d never even exchanged their phone numbers. Dimitri laced up his sneakers. If Claude wasn’t back by the time he returned to the dorm, _then_ he would have cause to worry, he thought.

Outside, the air was heavy with mid-August humidity, and it made old scars ache. Sweat slid down his spine at the halfway point, past the forty-ninth lamppost, and his mind wandered thoughtlessly. It wandered, as it often did this week, to Claude. The other man didn’t seem overly inattentive in their class, and he clearly wanted to be at the university. He had talked so openly about his dreams with him, like they were something he could not go back on. Yet, he spent his nights away from the dorm, and slept so little –

“Hey! Wait up!”

Dimitri’s feet came to an abrupt halt, stride skidding down to a walk. His head swiveled to the find the voice, chest heaving with huffed, hot breath. In the distance there was a pinprick of a figure, growing closer by the passing minute. Dimitri strained his gaze against the sun to pick him out.

It was Claude, dressed for the occasion, trotting towards him at a pace more leisurely than Dimitri’s own had been. Dimitri did as he asked, waiting up, until Claude drew close enough for them to talk without yelling across the walkway. He caught the glint of a wristwatch as Claude drew himself over, hands on his knees.

“You’re a hard guy to catch up to, you know that?” Claude said, chest struggling a bit once he’d pulled himself back up again. “Figured it was you from across the way, but trying to run _with_ you…”

“My apologies,” They felt like half a reflex for him, now. “I didn’t know you were trying to catch up. I would have waited.”

Claude had a laugh that matched the beams of sun that slid over the horizon. It reminded Dimitri of home, up north; the palatial colonial with its far-reaching white walls, how the light blanched them in the mid-day scorch. His heart swelled tremendously in his chest, and he smiled, despite himself.

Already his heart had been racing. What was one more thing to add to it?

“You would’ve? I’d hate to interrupt your little morning jogs like that.”

“It’s not interrupting,” Dimitri said, perhaps a bit too hastily. “Not if you can keep up, that is.”

That made the corners of Claude’s mouth quirk. “You make it sound like a challenge.”

One that Claude was apparently willing to rise up to. The two of them fell into a rhythm, side by side. It was strange, but Dimitri relaxed like this. Of all the things _to_ get him to loosen up more around his roommate, running alongside him hadn’t been something he’d even thought of. Claude was lither than he looked, too, and Dimitri found it a bit trying to match his speed with him; it was as though Claude were trying to do the same, and it left them at a constant, strange standstill of speeding up and slowing down.

And Claude _talked._ Claude talked a lot. About anything his mind came to. Books he’d read, music he had listened to, games he’d played, the people he’d met so far. Whatever could fill the silence between their huffing.

“So that is where you’ve been,” Dimitri said. They were nearing the end of the route now, close enough to see the dormitory rising in the distance. “At parties?”

“Yeah, see,” Claude carded a hand through his hair, swiping sweaty strands behind one ear. “I was _supposed _to be on the Gold Floor. But a mix-up happened, and, well. I got roomed in with you. All my friends, however? They just happen to be in the floor below us, or have houses of their own. I’ve been making it to bed, just. Y’know. Not my _own_ bed.”

Something unpleasant jumped in Dimitri’s stomach. He squashed it down. It wasn’t his business to be feeling such a way, not when he’d acted the way he had.

Claude continued. “I guess I do keep coming back at some pretty odd hours, huh?”

“You could say that,” They were walking now, instead of running. He hadn’t even noticed it happening. “I was worried that I might have offended you.”

“What, for running off? Nah. Figured you just didn’t like the joke. And besides,” There was a lull in his sentence, then. “It _was_ a bit forward.”

_Oh. A joke. _Dimitri forced a laugh. “It was, yes, but I just needed—” What was he going to say? The week had been too long, and he scrambled desperately for the apologies he’d planned on saying to Claude when he saw him again. The silence grew long between them. Claude’s eyes searched him, watched him come up empty, and then _he_ laughed, pulling it from the bottom of his stomach.

“You love apologizing and explaining yourself, don’t you?”

Dimitri’s cheeks tinged pink. “Does it bother you?”

“Not really,” Claude said. “But you don’t have to do it. Hey,” His finger lunged forward, pointing off, and Dimitri’s eyes followed it – then wished they hadn’t. “Care for a coffee? Probably doesn’t surprise you to hear it, but I’m _exhausted._”

***

The gleam in Dorothea’s eyes had a kind of savage delight, her smile preternaturally drawn out as she took both his and Claude’s order. Dimitri didn’t think he’d ever seen her so awake, even when she wasn’t imprisoned at the café in the mornings. She was chatty, smiley, laughed when Claude told her a joke – and, most particularly, fixed Dimitri with a look that did not invite him into the conversation so much as it demanded it of him.

Claude took his coffee black. Not an ounce of sugar, not a drop of milk.

Dorothea offered him his usual.

“You like it sweet, huh?” Claude asked, with a wink.

He felt Dorothea on him like a lick of fire. “I do.”

“ – So you’re _Claude,”_ Dorothea said, her arms crossed atop a windowed display of glazed pastries and bagels. There was a tint to her voice that even Dimitri could read very clearly: _you’re such an idiot. Let me handle this._ “Dimitri has had a lot to say about _you._ But you know, words alone don’t get across how handsome you are in _person._”

Claude drew a fingertip along the rim of his cup. “You talked about me?”

“A few times, yes,” Uncertainty crawled into his tone. “But…”

“Mostly concern,” Dorothea interjected, sensing weakness. “He was hoping he hadn’t scared you off from the dorm, or you were getting yourself into something _bad._”

“Aw,” Humor lapped at the edges of Claude’s voice. “Well, isn’t that kind.” He took a sip of his coffee, then. “But I guess you _have_ seen me outside of the dorm, right? Surprised that didn’t assuage some of your fears.”

“I…” Recollection dawned horribly onto him. How could he forget? Claude had even caught him staring. “Oh, right. Professor Hanneman’s class,”

“Uh huh, how could you forget?” Claude’s tone took on a deeper inflection. “ _‘ Acquisition of divine power frees men from the temptations of violence and injustice … ‘ _and blah, blah, blah.”

Dorothea gave a snicker; she had taken Hanneman’s philosophy course too, once upon a time.

“But …” Claude said, and he said it slowly, deliberately, like a contrivance. “We _could_ see each other out of our classes, and our dorms.”

Even Dorothea seemed surprised by him, her lips parting as though looking to say something quickly.

“Not like _that, _I mean – don’t look so shocked, both of you.” Claude put down his coffee cup and fished about in the pockets of his sweatpants for his phone. “You asked about the parties I go to, didn’t you, Dimitri?”

Dimitri had no idea where this is going. Dorothea didn’t look as though she did, either, though her mouth had closed by this point, content to watch Claude for the moment.

“I suppose I did,” He gave, by way of what felt like a terrible answer.

“Let me give you my number. My buddy’s having a party tomorrow. Monday classes won’t feel _good,_ but you might as well come have a look, right? _Branch out_ a bit.” Claude dipped his head to Dorothea. “You can come too, if you want.”

Dimitri didn’t have a chance to reply. Dorothea’s lips had parted again and with it came an answer, “Oh, we’d love to. Wouldn’t we, _Didi?” _

Claude turned to him, then, all sunflower smiles and big green eyes, and the ‘ no, I can’t ‘ died on Dimitri’s lips before it ever had a chance to sow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the support! If you'd like to catch me elsewhere, I've started a twitter for my AO3 account @gensuis , I'd love to see you there! As a heads up, I'm going to Mackinac Island next week AND my birthday is the week after, so the next chapter might be squeezed in between a two week period! I'd like it very much if I were able to keep it up on a week by week period, but that might be a bit difficult in the coming weeks!


	3. Chapter 3

“God, not that one,” Dorothea’s earrings winked at him. “Unless you _want_ to look like an uptight church boy.”

Dimitri, who just so happened to be an uptight church boy, frowned. He took the shirt off and buttoned on another one, before turning around for his less than adoring audience: Dorothea, Byleth, and Dedue, fished out from the belly of his culinary classes. They’d packed themselves into Dorothea and Byleth’s teensy apartment for the evening, per the former’s request. The furnishings were spartan, Byleth’s hand more than Dorothea’s, but her influence wriggled its way in still in the shape of fun touches across the place, such as the triptych of wall-length mirrors that’d been nailed into the walls behind him.

The three of them were perched on the edge of the bed. Dedue took most of the space, squashed between them and large enough that it forced Byleth and Dorothea to overflow around the edges like foaming liquid in a forgotten cup, but none of them minded. Best for them to sit this way, where they could give their critiques and praise in full frontal force.

Byleth tapped a finger on the center of her lip. “You don’t have anything that’s not a button-up, do you?”

“I do!” He felt defensive, a man on trial for his wardrobe choices, presumed guilty long before he was thought innocent. “But these are _nicer._”

“_Not_ with the buttons all done up like that,” Dorothea said. Those earrings of hers jangled as she stood up. Button by button, she pulled the top front of his shirt open. “If you’re going to wear something so _stuffy,_ you might as well button it _down_ a little.”

“She may be right,” Said Dedue, in a diplomatic rumble. His agreement was the one that made Dimitri’s eyes dizzy with embarrassment. “It stands, at least, that of the people in this room, Dorothea and Byleth alone are the ones who have dates of their own. Their advice is worth listening to.”

Dorothea grabbed Dimitri at both shoulders, and turned him about to face the mirror, chirping, “See? Even Dedue agrees!”

It took him a moment to focus on any one thing in that mirror. Dorothea had done her best with the remnants of Dimitri’s fairly practical closet, but she’d done better with his austere clothing choices than he would have on his own. She had a knack for making the simplest pieces come alive, in a way that he never would have thought of. But she had kept him in mind. He was minimal, but not plain. The hot button topic among them all – that crisp white button up – had been tucked into a pair of black chinos, and his sleek loafers shined back at him. There was a glimpse of a black undershirt beneath those undone buttons, the slightest hint of a tease.

He looked good – less stuffy, even, though he kept that acknowledgment to himself.

The reflection peering back at him was doe-eyed, and he was reminded of an easily startled rabbit. Dimitri tried to train his expression back into something less anxious, less outwardly terrified, but try as he might, the wrinkle between his eyebrows remained. Already he had bored the others with his reservations: they weren’t of the drinking age, what if he did something strange, said something that made Claude turn away from him? Those fears bubbled up again, just beneath the skin.

Dorothea’s hands stayed on his shoulders, warm even through the fabric of his shirts, and comforting, still.

“You look good,” She said. Her fingers smoothed away the wrinkles at his back. “And I’ll be there the whole time, so don’t look so worried.”

“You don’t _have_ to go,” Dimitri’s head looked out at her over his shoulder. “I don’t mean to put you on the spot like I am.”

“I want to go,” She smiled at him, soft enough to touch. “It’s a _party,_ after all!”

***

The address that Claude had given them lead down to a small townhouse further into the tiny city that circled Garreg Mach University. It was down the hill that the college and some of the town was situated on, past spiraling staircases that Dorothea wobbled over in her heels – Dimitri wound up carrying her on her back about three-fourths of the way, with her arms slung about his neck, long, thick hair tickling his nape.

A crescendo of noise greeted them all the way to the front door. The curtains were drawn tight, and dark shapes shadowboxed behind the flash of blue-green light within. Dimitri’s guts felt heavy. This was his first college party, he realized; he hadn’t even intended to go to it without Claude’s beckoning eyes. He was struck by a sense of gratefulness for Dorothea, whose fingers threaded his own. He didn’t think he could have done this all on his own, or at least, half so smoothly. Dimitri would need to tell her that.

Claude was the one to open the door to them.

“You’re late!” He scolded, but his lips bowed still into that secretive smile. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to show.”

He looked cleaner than he had in Hanneman’s classroom. Crisper, somehow, with a flair of the dramatic in the shape of a pair of obnoxious yellow pants, that he’d cuffed to reveal a flash of brown ankle. In one of his hands was a vibrant blue drink in a small martini glass, a garish little pink umbrella protruding from the rim. Claude looked more in his element than Dimitri did, undoubtedly, relaxed, as though he belonged there.

“So sorry,” Dorothea was saying, and that brought Dimitri back to where he needed to be. On the doorstep, staring out at Claude. “Didi had to carry me down all those _steps. _But a girl just had to wear her best heels, right? I didn’t mean to hold us up.”

Dorothea turned on the ball of her foot, showing off her heels, and Dimitri had the faintest feeling that maybe she’d planned for this all along. Her elbow knocked against his own, and he understood then, realization dawning quick as a drawn arrow into his chest.

“Yes,” The word fell out of him so fast it could have started running. “We’re sorry to have kept you waiting. It was a long walk.”

“You should’ve said you had to walk!” Claude’s drink tilted forward with the rest of him. “I can get us a ride _back, _if you want. I know people! Which… come on in. I’ll introduce you.”

That began a flurry of introductions for them both. Hilda was there, of course, stuffing cotton candy into a cocktail glass in the kitchen, but there were others, too, a menagerie of friendships that all seemed so different and haphazard that Dimitri could hardly begin to imagine how they’d come together in the cobweb of this building in the first place.

There was the business student, Raphael, who lived here with his boyfriend Ignatz, and who could do a whole keg stand by himself and come back down from it seemingly gregariously unaffected by it at all. Lorenz, who’d purveyed the entire shocking scene from the corner of the couch, and who’s voice made Dorothea’s teeth grind in her mouth. Lysithea, who was studying Biochemistry, and who talked a lot and very hurriedly about the homework she needed to get done but who’s eyes lit up in a kiddish gleam at the events around her. Leonie, also a business student, and who talked often and a lot about a man named Jeralt. And even Marianne, who seemed as though she’d grown directly from the wallpaper, who spoke little and looked a lot as though she’d have loved to have been anywhere else.

“That’s the Golden Deer for you,” Said Claude, at last, raising his now half-emptied glass to Dimitri. Dorothea had excused herself mere moments ago, shooting Dimitri a look, joining Hilda in the kitchen to speak as though they’d been bosom buddies all their life.

“Golden Deer?”

“You know, I keep forgetting we haven’t really had a chance to get to _know_ one another. Yup, the Golden Deer. My little moped gang. When it comes down to it, we’re all just a bunch of mismatched college students that can’t find friends in anyone else, but if _you _wanted,” He winked. “You could _fawn_ over us.”

Dimitri imagined that. A throng of mopeds on the streets, helmed by Claude, leather jacket clad and confident enough to ride one at all. It fit. It even brought a fleeting, wavering smile to his face.

“Are you asking me to join?”

“Get a moped,” Claude said, all light. “Then we’ll talk. But before I start recruiting… I think you need a drink.”

One of Dimitri’s hands flew up. “No, I shouldn’t – I mean, I’m not twenty-one.”

“Neither am I,” Claude downed the rest of his drink in one fluid gulp. “But that’s a limitation that a government sets out, right? It doesn’t mean anything other than some stuffy old men in a big courthouse decided we _can’t_ drink. You need to think outside of those limitations.”

It was surprising, and laughter clambered out of Dimitri’s throat then, quick enough that it made the rest of the room seem as though it fell right with it. Claude had a way of speaking that made him feel less unwelcome. Dimitri was beginning to notice that.

“You sound as though you mean to peer pressure me. But I won’t be so easily swayed.”

“I’ve got some schemes in mind,” Claude was looking up at him through his lashes. Looking _up._ “I can’t even beg you to drink just one?”

Later, he would call it a moment of weakness; it was the way Claude looked at him, then, eyes sparking with interest, the way his mouth grew drier by the second. “One,” He’d said, softly, and that had turned into a second beer, then a third. Claude had opened the bottles for him, popping open bottlecaps with long, hard fingers that Dimitri had wanted to see again, and again. A buzz collected in the bottom of his feet, sending whole vibrations through him that made his limbs feel unbelievably long, gangly, but it loosened him considerably. The voices that muttered in the back of his mind dissipated like a sun-blazed fog.

Claude stuck with him through much of the party since he’d arrived – ignoring Dimitri only to greet the people that passed him, or spoke to him first. It struck Dimitri as strange. These were all his friends, here, and surely there were other people to talk to? But the other man was content just to lean against the walls in Raphael’s cramped living room with Dimitri, letting the music from the speaker wash over them.

Dorothea had left them a while ago, a red-dressed apparition that appeared here and there, flitting mostly from person to person like a bird building its spring nest.

Now, Claude was speaking with Ignatz. In that blotting drunkenness, Dimitri couldn’t stop himself from watching him. Claude moved a lot when he spoke, in languid, lazy movements that Dimitri’s eyes followed. The stretch of an arm behind the head, the drag of nails across his own neck. Dimitri didn’t feel hot, or even embarrassed. A new feeling blossomed in him instead, prickling around his heart like a crown of thorns.

He tilted his own head back, and drew the stem of his beer with him. Music jittered out jerking lyrics nearby, and Dimitri listened, letting the noise inside.

_Smokey eyes / are you feeling good? / For now you’re here with me / seems like we’ve waited long enough / for someone else to make us feel complete / It’s not a bitter flavor / and it’s not a sweeter drink_

“Wanna dance,” Claude turned back over to him. “Roomie?”

The beer in his throat turned solid, and Dimitri choked. Alcohol swept up into his nose and then burned out of him, and when he bent over to hack up both lungs, Claude’s hands were smacking at his back, rough enough to chop his coughing fit up.

“Sorry,” He said, up again. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… there isn’t anyone else you’d like to dance with?”

“Did I ask anyone else?” But he did not seem annoyed to say it. “What, can’t dance?”

“Ballroom, and square dancing, but – not the dancing you’re thinking of.”

“These aren’t really ballroom dancing _tunes,_ but… come on. It’s easy. I’ll even give you a lesson.”

It was the drink, Dimitri thought, that made him say yes. But it was the way Claude shimmied his body with him, _against_ him that made him want to keep going. He’d been right, as he often seemed to be. It _was_ easy. And once they started dancing, so did a few others. Dorothea and Hilda had found in one another a new best friend, and they swayed together, a tide of giggles flooding from them both.

“You need to loosen up,” Claude’s hands were on Dimitri’s hips. Guiding, mostly, but they made his feet feel clumsier than they already were, and it made it even harder to focus on not stepping on Claude’s feet. “Follow like I’m doing, let yourself _feel _it.”

He shut his eyes, and tried to, the way Claude had told him to. Vibrations gamboled in his chest.

_So help me make amends / with all my friends / most other people are just dead ends / There’s nothing worse than making friends _

“Just like that, _Didi,”_ Claude’s voice was in his ear; the front of their pants brushed together, enough of a tease to send a jolting thrill up Dimitri’s spine. When he opened his eyes again, the side of Claude’s head came into view. His mouth _was_ close, and Dimitri swore he could feel breath on his cheeks. Claude’s smell was in his nose. Like spiced tea, and sweat, and traces of a cologne he couldn’t place.

It was tentative, and bolder than he would have been normally, but his own hands came round to the top of Claude’s hips. He felt the impression of pelvic bone there, indistinct enough to feel dreamlike. The two of them stayed like that for a breathless moment, shifting together in something that felt less like a dance more like the gentle flux of two bodies, stepping out of time with the beat as though put into a trance.

But then Claude whispered, “Go outside with me?” and Dimitri followed him into the kitchen and then through the backdoor into a yard that was the size of an extra-large postage stamp, though not by much. A tall fence towered over the whole thing, shielding neighboring homes mostly from view.

The sky was blue-black like a bruise, and littered with stars. Long ago, Dimitri had learned about them, but he’d forgotten most of their names by this point. Not that etymology mattered overmuch to him. He had always just been happy to look at them. They made him feel more at peace, closer to the earth, a grounded feeling that made everything around him seem less terrible just by being on his own two feet beneath it.

Claude’s finger aimed itself towards a particularly gleaming star. “That one’s _at-Tarf. _Part of Leo.”

“You know them?”

“I like stars,” Said Claude. “They make everything else seem so insignificantly small. Even the big things feel like they don’t matter as much, or like I can almost grasp them. Maybe I won’t ever get to touch the stars, but some pipe dreams seem almost reachable in comparison.”

“I like them too,” Said Dimitri. “But I suppose I’ve never thought about that.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” There was a sliver of a smile when Claude said it. “To broaden those sheltered horizons.”

“Sheltered, am I?” He hugged at his arms. Cold air ribboned around them, making gooseflesh rise beneath the rub of his hands. Noise rose behind them in the house again. Laughter, music, and light, spilling over Claude’s face, illuminating him.

“You don’t agree?”

“What makes you think it?” That sense of welcoming wrapped him up again, made him lose himself, rising to Claude’s words again; it felt gently teasing, nigh relaxing.

“Just observation,” Claude said. “For example, I bet this is your first college party, right? So you don’t know what to expect, or how the night’s going to go. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that this was your first raucous part with _friends_ ever.” A pause. “You didn’t pick that outfit, did you? Dorothea did.”

Dimitri’s breath caught. “I –” A swallow. Inside the house, someone was yelling. “You’re right. She picked it out, because … “

Claude was looking at him, and expectantly, the corners of his mouth upturning in a way that made spitting the rest of his sentence out a harrowing task. Like standing on the edge of the building, whipped by the wind. He wet his lips with his tongue. _Because I wanted to impress you. _He could say it; wished Dorothea were here, with her hands and her smile. His lips parted again.

The back door flew open, smacking into the wall sharp enough to make them both flinch. Dorothea streamed down the steps, grabbing at Dimitri’s upper arm hard enough that her nails left prints. It took him a moment to recognize her: wide-eyed, bushy-haired, and the large figure of Raphael filled the whole doorway behind her, startled and shoulder-shook.

“Dorothea--”

“The police!” She said, and Dimitri felt the jerk in his skin. Claude’s head snapped to Raphael. Over the shape of the house, Dimitri saw red and blue flaring behind. “We need to go, right now – over the fence!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the continued support! A reminder to please leave kudos, a comment, a bookmark or follow me at my Twitter @ gensuis!
> 
> * the song lyrics used here are Smokey Eyes, by Lincoln.


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